Traditional C-41 processing (color negative) is designed to yield a properly developed negative for traditional color printing. This process is optimized for the traditional output, archival color negative and a RA-4 processed color print.

Until recently there wasn't much choice. However, a company was recently perfecting a process whereby the film is processed in dry chemicals (non-wet process) and scanned at intermediate steps of development. Thus the maximum amount of information was obtained in the shadows and highlights. The dynamic range was very high. The last I heard was Kodak bought the company and was continuing development of the process. I haven't heard any further progress in the last year and I'm afraid Kodak may have shelved the program.

That's a shame. I could see that being very attractive, especially if the process could work with one's film scanner they already own and maybe a new program to capture and combine all the scans. I think if anyone could see it through it would be Kodak, but I keep reading that they're making big cuts in their film department and pretty much focusing on digital. Kind of a shame, but then again theres always Ilford. Thank you.

Most scanning software will give yo several different options to adjust the scans file size. You can adjust the target size to anything from original (24mm x 36mm) to finish (A4). Adjust the ppi of the scan to your desired resolution. I like to print files with 360 ppi. So, for the A4 print I would scan at 3060 ppi if keeping the target the same size. If you adjust the target size to A4 then scan at 360 ppi. Some people will print as 200 ppi if the finished size is very large and the viewing distance is also very large. I prefer to print at multiples of the printers native dpi, 360, 240, 480, 720. The greater the ppi the larger the file size.

Thanks Jeff, I've got it now. The ScanGear utility that come with Canon scanners uses output resolution and target image size. Everyone was saying scan at 3200 and if I did I was getting 300+ MB files sizes which was killing my nearly 4 yo PIII.